July 7

We are happy to announce that Valentina Kerman is now available at our Shapeways Store!

We’ve been working to bring Valentina to Shapeways for a long time and it’s great to see her complement the current figurines at long last. If you wish to read more about how such a process works you can find an article on our forums by lead artist DanRosas.

June 30

Introducing Kerbal Space Program’s second official mod: Asteroid Day! We’ve partnered with the B612 Foundation to bring you this mod which will give you four new parts, a new experiment, and a unique contract.

The Sentinel Infrared Telescope mimics the real world Sentinel mission being planned by the B612 Foundation, which plans to map 90% of the larger asteroids threatening Earth's orbit sometime between 2018 and 2024. Due to sun glare it is difficult for telescopes on Earth to observe objects passing on the planet's day side. Deploying a telescope into a solar orbit near Venus and facing it away from the Sun, back towards Earth's orbit, would cover that blind spot.

Your mission will be to recreate this mission profile in Kerbal Space Program, deploying a telescope around Eve’s orbit. When deployed with an antenna and a power source between Eve and Kerbin, aligned to face away from the Sun, and activated, the telescope will begin to map the orbit of the outer planet in a 200° vision cone for passing asteroids.

Other than the telescope itself, you will have three new parts to make your unmanned missions more enjoyable:

The HECS-2 Probe Core comes with integrated batteries and SAS, to make building a compact Sentinel probe much easier.

The OX-STAT-XL Photovoltaic Panels are a much larger version of the stock solar panels, for larger probes.

The HG-55 High Gain Antenna can transmit larger amounts of data than any of the existing antennae in the game.

This pack also includes a long-term contract to map asteroids around Kerbin as well as other planets that match various specifications. It differs from other contracts in that it encourages the use of existing infrastructure. It does not require a new vessel for each contract, and each scan is faster with more telescopes deployed.

About This Game

In KSP you must build a space-worthy craft, capable of flying its crew out into space without killing them. At your disposal is a collection of parts, which must be assembled to create a functional ship. Each part has its own function and will affect the way a ship flies (or doesn't). So strap yourself in, and get ready to try some Rocket Science!

The game offers three gameplay modes: Sandbox, in which you are free to build anything you can think of; Science Mode, which lets you perform Scientific experiments to advance the knowledge of Kerbalkind and further the available technology; and Career Mode, in which you must manage every aspect of your Space Program, including administration strategies, Crew Management, Reputation, as well as taking up Contracts to earn Funds and upgrade your Space Center Facilities (or repair them).

Add to this the ability to capture asteroids (a feature done in collaboration with NASA), Mining for resources out across the furthest reaches of the Solar System, Constructing Bases and Space Stations in and around other worlds; plus literally thousands of mods from a huge active modding community, all add up into the award-winning game that has taken the space sim genre by storm.

Key Features

The Vehicle Assembly Building and the Space Plane Hangar allows players to build spacecraft out of any imaginable combination of parts.

1st hour playing: WHAT DO I DO WHY IS IT BLOWING UP400th hour playing: If my calculations serve me right with this T/W ratio It will take me 1 minute 43 seconds to burn at my periapsis to reach duna insertion at which point I will get into an eliptical equatoral orbit and perform an aerobrake at 16km to get into a steady circular orbit and then I will descend with one of my 4 spaceplanes I took to go to the north pole at which I will set up base at my already existing rover while getting TAC resources to monitor life support and make sure my colony of 212 kerbals can live.

11/10

Edit because for some reason this gained popularity, proper review:

Pros:Endless fun, so much to do. Bored of building rockets? Build a space plane! Fed up of the mun? Go to Duna! Don't want to leave the atmosphere? Build whatever you want! The list goes on!

Fantastic modding community and fantastic mods. So much more expansion on an already amazing game.

Fantastic community in general, some of the nicest people I've met have came from this game. They are such a helpful bunch and I'm glad I'm with them! They'll most likely love to help you. There's also a bunch of fantastic YouTubers such as Scott Manley and others... (too many to name) :)

YOU CAN LEARN STUFF FROM THIS AND GAIN NEW INTERESTS! Before I played this I had no interest in space or space exploration whatsoever but now I actively follow space news and am quite knowledgable on the subject. I have also learnt a fantastic deal of orbital mechanics just from playing and learning the game.

Cons:

The engine and optimisation. This game uses Unity and it only uses 1 CPU core. This can be a major problem if running a multicore with low clock speed. The 32bit version of the game is a whole lot more stable but limits your RAM meaning that if you have a ton of mods you can run into a lot of crashes but thankfully there are mods out there such as ATM (Active Texture Management) and texture replacer to limit the amount of RAM the game uses. 64bit as of now is still pretty unstable with mods.

The learning curve and tutorials. The learning curve on this game is huge, I'm not complaining much about this one as rocket science isn't exactly easy is it? You can learn from trial and error and it's how I learnt alot but some things you just have to read up about or watch a tutorial on youtube. There isn't really much of a tutorial in game either.

To be honest, this is not a game for everyone. If you are in the market for some fast-paced "space combat sim" with all kinds of weapons and big explosions, then this isn't what you are looking for. (Except for the big explisions... KSP has you covered there).

However, if you ever dreamed of actually being an astronaut, this is definitely for you. If you sometimes forget to breath when watching recordings of the Apollo moon landings, this is definitely for you. If precise, measured flying; careful planning; and delta-v budgeting are what drives you, this is definitely for you. If you want to learn about Orbital Mechanics and are dying to know what the Oberth Effect or a Hofman Transfer Orbit are, this is definitely for you. If you like Physics, this is definitely for you.

Optionally, if you just like building rediculously large rockets and watching them explode with glorious comedy when they fail catastrophically because you forgot ONE PART... then this is also definitely for you.